Chicago PD season 7 premiere takeaways: Doubt

What can Chicago PD fans learn from the season premiere? Look closer at this week’s episode with our Chicago PD season 7, episode 1 takeaways.

What did One Chicago fans learn from the latest Chicago PD episode? Here’s what we took away from this week’s installment, “Doubt.”

“Doubt” featured Intelligence locating the killer of mayor-elect Brian Kelton: his former right-hand woman, Katherine Brennan (Anne Heche). But two members of the team butted heads over how to deal with her, ultimately resulting in her arrest.

If you missed any of this week’s episode or just want a refresher on the events that we’re about to discuss, you can catch up with our Chicago PD recap.

Below are our takeaways from this week’s episode:

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1) What’s up with the new boss?

Paul Adelstein had a brief appearance at the top of the season premiere as the new Superintendent of Police, Jason Crawford. The Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce star is going to recur throughout the season, including in next week’s episode.

But understandably, one scene delegating duties in the murder investigation wasn’t enough time for fans to get any kind of impression about him or his character. Who is Crawford? How did he get the top job? Is he going to be a good guy or a bad guy?

There are so many questions. Hopefully they’ll be answered soon, since it’ll only be a matter of time before Intelligence has to deal with the higher-ups in the department again. That has become a theme in this show, moreso over the last few seasons between Kelton and Denny Woods.

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2) It’s Voight’s way or the highway

It’s always been an unspoken rule, but “Doubt” explicitly showed how the Intelligence Unit works: you either follow Hank Voight (Jason Beghe) or you get out. That was the last line of the episode, after all.

Chicago PD demonstrated how one-sided it is with this episode. No one other than Jay Halstead (Jesse Lee Soffer) really questioned Voight’s culpability, even though they had every right to think he was a suspect. And even then, Halstead publicly reversed his position, getting into a shouting match with the Homicide cop who told him Voight was being investigated.

So it never truly felt like there was any, well, doubt. And there should be—these characters ought to be questioning one another sometimes, especially when the whole premise of the show is that they don’t do things according to most rules. Will Halstead get back in line or not? He shouldn’t, if the show wants to move forward, but we’ll see.

3) More racist cops

“Doubt” threw in a very odd beat when it made the Homicide cop racist, willing to shoot a black suspect when they cornered him at gunpoint. Of course, it was Kevin Atwater (LaRoyce Hawkins) who had to defuse the situation, since he is also black. The whole thing was a head-scratcher.

Why did the racism angle even need to exist? And how cliche was it, that it was once again the white cop? Or that Atwater had to be the one to fix it? Chicago PD put even more emphasis on race by saying that Kevin was the hero, because the implication is only the black cop can really earn the trust of the black suspect.

How about we just have good cops, regardless of their race? And why does Atwater always have to deal with every race-related issue on the show? Whatever that subplot was going for, it ended up feeling like a forced mess.

For the latest Chicago PD season 7 spoilers and news, plus more on the entire series, follow the Chicago PD category at One Chicago Center.